Movin' On

Well, this has been a great weekend! I spent half of it on Kenya's Indian Ocean coast, in Kilifi and Mombasa, and the other half on the couch in Nairobi trying to recover from the first half.

NOTE TO SELF: When the sign on your hotel bathroom mirror implores you to PLEASE don't drink the tap water, you probably shouldn't even brush your teeth with it. For the past couple years, after Gulu and Nairobi, I've considered my stomach fairly cauterized, because I haven't really had any major intestinal distress. But I'm pretty sure I just saw one of my kidneys swirling down the toilet bowl. The good news is there are a couple of pair of jeans in my closet that I'll probably be able to wear again this week.

But the short jaunt to the East Coast, for a town hall meeting for teenagers about HIV/AIDS and sex, helped clear my head of recent memory lane drama and got me refocused on the work for a minute. One thing I've learned since living in Kenya is that if you really want to get the most out of these kinds of discussions, you probably need separate groups for girls and boys. Kenya's coast is heavily Muslim, which makes it even more hard-core traditional and conservative than the rest of the country. That meant the boys dominated the discussion. I'd say only 3 girls out of a group of 40 teenagers even dared raise their hand. But it was a good session, and all you can do is hope some vital information got through to at least one young person.

Now I'm trying to regroup and get ready for next week. When not clutching my gut, I've been following some of the news about the epic snowstorm in the Mid-Atlantic (my favorite nickname so far: "snOMG 2010"). What is it: 6 or 7 feet so far in some places???? I'm feeling pretty lucky to have missed it--in a way. On the other hand, if I'd been there, I would have seriously tried to join some of the massive snowball fights that occurred all over DC. They sounded like wicked fun!

And I'm also kind of bracing for a potential nostalgia blizzard of my own, a sort of "Emo-mageddon" that might even rival "Snow-mageddon." You see, I just got another email from Denmark, from one of my online liaisons of a few years back. We never met in person, just phoned and emailed before losing touch. Now he just wants to know what I'm up to, and whether I've "found myself a good man yet."

Who knows--maybe the Universe is launching a "Old Skool Relationship Rewind Tour" for my benefit. Perhaps, if enough viable entries re-appear, I should consider poking over old embers to see if something sparks.....

NAAAAAAH! Onward, upward and forward.